


For Forever

by whilewilde



Series: Reddie on Broadway [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King, IT Chapter 2
Genre: Angst, Broadway References, Comfort, Dear Evan Hansen References, I essentially put reddie through pain for 500+ words, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Richie punches a lot of walls, Sad, Suicide Notes, Triggers, blame the DEH soundtrack for being so sad okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 13:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21016763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whilewilde/pseuds/whilewilde
Summary: Richie didn't things would end soon, and with one note.





	For Forever

**Author's Note:**

> Heads up for triggering content relating to suicide. This is the second instalment in Reddie in broadway, but I promise the others will be a lot more lighthearted.  
Should you wish to support me, my twitter handle and Tumblr user are both: whilewilde.

"You gotta stop doing this!" 

Eddie was scolding Richie, again. He could never remember exactly what had happened beforehand, but he remembers the exact moment his fist connected with the wall. If Richie didn't think he was pathetic before, his inability to even damage a wall was enough to confirm it.

"Ouch! fuck, be careful." Richie hissed as Eddie tried to apply ice to his now red knuckles.

"It was your _own_ fault, dumbass." Eddie mumbled, looking up at Richie and cracking a small smile.

"Okay.. I'm sorry, _Dad." _

Eddie chose not to respond. He knew Richie well enough to know when he was just picking a fight because he was bored, or rather because his ego was mortally wounded. If Richie knew now how much he could wind Eddie up, he figured that he probably wouldn't have been such a prick. 'Probably' he thinks, knowing that Eddie wouldn't have had him any other way. 

"There you go, you asshole. All patched up." Eddie holds Richie's hand in his for a second, before reaching down and lightly kissing his knuckles.

"I love you, you know that?" 

Eddie liked when Richie said those 3 words. He knew how much it hurt Richie to open up to someone, and let them see how much shit he was really going through. When they found each other again, Richie was a mess. Even to admit he had a drinking problem decimated his pride. 

"If only the feeling was mutual." Eddie joked, leaning in to kiss Richie.

Richie didn't have pride anymore. He could never go back to drinking the way he used to, but sometimes it seemed so tempting. Whenever he went to reach for a bottle, he just saw Eddie... and god, he couldn't do that to Eddie. To let himself down, he thought, was comfortable ground, but not Eddie.

There was a period when forever seemed planned out exactly as they wanted, and it felt as if the universe had set them on the right path.

Forever, Richie would learn, doesn't really exist. 

Forever was just a word, destroyed by a note that he would find attached the bannister when he returned home one Friday in December. It was a word that had no understanding of how tempting it really is, and how a thousand 'I'm sorry's' in the handwriting of your former lover can never bring it back.

That Friday in December, Richie suddenly learned what 'Forever' wasn't. It wasn't spending Christmas alone, having to crawl back to your parents for help, endless therapy and trauma counselling. It certainly wasn't having to bury someone that he was due to propose to that Christmas Eve. 

Whenever Richie would go into a blind fit of rage and attack a wall, or have a panic attack so intense it felt like death itself, he only could think about how Eddie would've calmed him down. Eddie would've patched up his wounds. Eddie would've rolled his eyes at some inappropriate one liner from Richie. They could've played the game of "who in the Loser's club will get divorced first" one last time, just for a laugh.

The last laugh, it appeared, was on Richie.

Mike, Bev, Ben and Bill all rallied around him, but they could only do so much. The waves of grief were so strong sometimes it felt like all Richie could do was give in, and drown. Whilst he had his friends throughout the day, at night it was just him in that house built for two, the double bed they once shared now painfully empty. Everything was a reminder that he was alone. 

He'd considered suicide, of course. Richie would talk about it so liberally that Bev would pull him aside and ask if he was okay. He wasn't, of course, but he played it off as a joke, because that's who he was. That's who Eddie expected him to be.

Whenever he got _really_ bad, he would reach into his jean pocket and pull out that note.

He would read the words 'Be brave' over and over until he believed he could be. Eddie didn't need to be there to see it; he always knew that Richie was so much braver than he let on.


End file.
